It doesn’t look like Putin was making a personal endorsement. Reuters reports that the Russian leader was discussing the arrest and conviction of three women in the punk-protest band Pussy Riot and that:

“He suggested the band’s notoriety had forced its ‘indecent’ name into public discourse, reinforcing the point by prodding his interviewer to translate the word ‘pussy.’

” ‘I want to direct your attention to the moral side of the issue,’ he added, describing a previous group-sex stunt that included at least one of the convicted women and adding a off-color joke of his own about group sex.”

– He recently took off in a motorized hang glider to help try to lead a flock of cranes into the wild. There’s video here. Putin “donned a baggy white costume with a spacious helmet and goggles [that supposedly made him look a bit like a bird] and flew in a motorised deltaplane light aircraft surrounded by several young cranes that were born in captivity, in order to help introduce them to the wild,” Reuters says.

Oh, there’s also some more substantive news. Putin said Russia could work with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney if the former Massachusetts governor wins the White House. But he also “took aim” at Romney, “calling his criticism of Russia ‘mistaken’ campaign rhetoric and suggesting a Romney presidency would widen the rift over the anti-missile shield the United States is deploying in Europe,” Reuters reports.